It is well appreciated that inefficient combustion within the cylinders of an internal combustion engine gives rise to a serious air pollution problem as well as significantly affecting the overall efficiency and performance of the engine. More specifically, inefficient combustion often means that a significant quality of the fuel mixture within a particular cylinder is not totally burned and is, therefore, exhausted from the engine into the air. Such unburned compounds are thus emitted to the air. While these compounds are harmful from a pollution standpoint, they also include valuable energy that is wasted to the air.
In terms of performance, these exhausted gases, as noted above, do include useable energy that is not captured and utilized during the combustion process. Thus, if the unused energy associated with the normally exhausted gases could be efficiently harnassed during the combustion process, it obviously follows that the engine would be more efficient and require less fuel for a given distance of travel.
Federal legislation and standards have in the past few years required automotive makers to implement various anti-pollution measures on automobiles produced. While it is recognized that these anti-pollution measures have, in most cases, reduced pollution from the automobile, it likewise has been seen that these same anti-pollution measures have generally reduced the efficiency of the automobile engine and have resulted in reduced fuel economy, thereby giving rise to an increased fuel requirement. All of this has led the consumer to believe that any device that is installed on an engine to reduce pollution has to reduce the efficiency of that same engine and will decrease the efficient use of gasoline.
More recently the presence of the much talked about "energy crisis" has presented a dilemma to the public as well as the automotive engineers. This dilemma revolves around the question of the delicate balance between controlling the environment on one hand, and the conservation of fuel on the other hand, both of which are of vital concern.